Acer Swift 7 review

Whenever the Acer Swift 7 has been shown at CES 2018, it had been promoted as the'world's thinnest laptop,' while packaging a sizable 14-inch display and keeping the svelte design. On the other hand, the Acer Swift 7 2018 sacrificed a lot to keep its thin laptop name.

As an example, the Acer Swift 7 uses a exceptional touchpad alternative that does not click -- either physically or haptically, such as the MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. Acer made this compromise to keep thinness, but it was not worthwhile. Fortunately, Acer mended this bizarre design choice from the Acer Swift 2019.

However, it is not merely the trackpad. Compromises were made to engine: the Acer Swift 7 is packaged with the older, fanless 7th-generation Intel Core Y-series processor that causes it to lag behind the top Ultrabooks. And, while it is a gorgeous device, as well as features built-in LTE compatibility, it is difficult to recommend when there are a lot of better options out there.

Price and availability

The Acer Swift 7 comes in only a single setup, calling for $1,699 (about £1,280, AU $2,275) within a black or black on gold colour option. This can get you all listed to the best, such as a fingerprint detector for Windows Hello login, in addition to an LTE modem and eSIM built in.

However if you look at the HP Spectre 13, it is only a sixth of an inch thicker than the Acer Swift 7 plus features a more powerful Intel Kaby Lake Refresh Core i7 Ultrabook-class processor, using straight comparable memory and storage. This is while being less costly in $1,399 (about £1,055, AU$1,873). On the other hand, the Spectre 13's display is about an inch smaller, but it may be configured with 16GB of RAM and a bigger SSD compared to the Acer Swift 7 for only 10 bucks more.

The hottest 12-inch MacBook from Apple steps marginally thicker at 0.52 inches, and might cost 50 dollars or quid less to coincide with the Acer laptop on storage and memory and provide a better display, even though it's missing biometric login along with a few screen real estate.

Then, there's the Huawei MateBook X Pro, a 14-inch laptop that'll put you back only $1,499 (about £1,130, AU$2,000) that totally destroys the Acer Swift 7 by a value standpoint. It is not quite as light or thin, but it is not that way off for offering double the RAM and storage in addition to a more powerful Nvidia GeForce MX150 GPU and a more powerful CPU -- oh, and also not to mention, a much sharper display at 3,000 x 2,000 pixels.

Now, the Acer Swift 7 only comes with an unhealthy obsession with both connectivity, thinness and mobility -- much to the detriment of everything else. You could have the ability to locate some bargains that assist the Acer Swift 7 carve a good market -- but it probably will not be enough.

Design

Acer has obviously developed this laptop with thinness, lightness and portability in mind. The Acer Swift 7's weight comes in at only 2.6 lbs, and it measures only 0.35 inches (8.98mm) lean.

This laptop is amazing, encased within this all-black, brushed aluminum unibody chassis with two sturdy hinges holding the display in place. Acer's newest Swift 7 is definitely one of the most lavish feeling laptops we have ever used. Even the screen bezels and trackpad are wrapped in chrome rings -- as is the fingerprint reader.

Fortunately, the keyboard on the Acer Swift 7 2018 is backlit and feels great to type on -- despite the very shallow journey. Turning up the comments induce helps a lot . But, we can not say the exact same for the trackpad.

Acer chose to fully remove the snapping functionality from the trackpad from the title of milestone thinness. Therefore, you're left using tap to click as the sole way of interacting with Windows 10 -- barring connecting an external mouse.

This clickless trackpad significantly reduced the rate at which we could browse through Windows 10, preventing us by moving the cursor using our index finger and clicking on things along with our thumb, such as most laptop users are used to.

Before going for the Acer Swift 7, you really ought to think about how important the trackpad experience will be to you personally before choosing it up -- it is something you are going to be stuck with for the life span of the notebook. We certainly were not to it, and you also might not be, either.

We can go on all day about this bizarre design decision, but only understand this omission brings a critical learning curve or leveling of expectations. Though we are enormous tap to click fans, we found utilizing the Acer Swift 7 for somewhat painful without having the ability to click in any way. Without it, resizing and moving windows necessitates exact double ovens, which gets dull quickly.

Display, screen and sound

Acer has gone great lengths to improve the Swift 7 multimedia experience, but these pursuits have produced fresh downsides of their own. Now, the touchscreen is 14 inches on the diagonal, thanks to much more narrow bezels.

The IPS screen makes colours absolutely pop up and offers up broad viewing angles for sharing articles, which might come in handy when pushing the display down 180 degrees. Pictures and photos look crisp and vibrant throughout the CineCrystal LED display.

But, Acer appears to have been made to transfer the webcam to under the display so as to reduce the unwanted bezel width. Of course, we are not as miffed with this to the Acer Swift 7 than we have already been using that of the Dell XPS 13: centered however under the display rather than preceding it.

We have seen Ultrabooks attain similarly thin bezels with generally positioned webcams, therefore there's hardly any excuse here.

If it comes to audio, it should not come as a surprise that it is bad coming in the Acer Swift 7's slender frame. The laptop's design leaves space for just the tiniest audio drivers that passion out of the base of its foundation, leaving you tinny and thin sound in music and movies. Just be thankful that Acer did not kill the headphone jack in creating the world's thinnest laptop.

Performance

For breaking as much as it will, the Acer Swift 7 specs and performance are not really what we'd expect. The Intel processor inside the laptop includes two main things working against it when it comes to performance -- it is 7th-generation chip that's been easily outclassed from the 8th generation, and it is Y-series processor -- one designed for low-power, fanless devices.

While there's nothing wrong with such a processor, the problem is that laptop's key competitors in this price range are not that much thicker and thicker for utilizing full-blown Intel U-series processors... and are much more better off for this.


As you can see by the benchmarks, the Swift 7 is outclassed from the Spectre 13 in each performance-based routine -- and that laptop is only six-tenths of an inch thicker (and a hair lighter). This is mainly because the HP laptop uses an 8th-generation, U-series full-fat Intel processor to the Swift 7's old, lower-power chip.

You may see the exact same story play out over contrasts, in which the Huawei option particularly outpaces the Swift 7 using its committed graphics. Even the 12-inch MacBook produced similar performance numbers using a poorer Intel m3 processor from the exact same generation, probably on account of just how much more Apple could tune its own computer hardware into the software.

By all accounts, the Swift 7 only doesn't produce performance that is similar to rivaling laptops that include similar price tags or so are available for much less. We see a little bit of sluggishness from the laptop when opening ad-filled web pages when loading huge media files.

For being merely tenths of an inch thinner compared to the rest, the Swift 7 convinced does miss out on a good deal.

Battery life

That saidwe do locate the Swift 7 to bring forth some fantastic battery life amounts, even when they're unsurprisingly behind Acer's own promises. While Acer claims around 10 hours of use from the laptop, we have seen it last a bit more than an hour less than that.

You are probably able to get an whole work day's worth of use out of the laptop; of course, supposing the tasks included are relatively lightweight. Meanwhile, we have found the more potent MateBook X Pro and more popular MacBook to continue as long in our benchmarks -- both of which may be had for under that laptop.

Windows Hello and onboard LTE

Some of the most compelling features about the Swift 7 would be its own biometric login and mobile connectivity. The biometric login comes using a fingerprint detector that's embedded into the keyboard left of the Tab key.

The installation for this fingerprint detector is equally as easy as on other Windows laptops, and it works beautifully. The placement is also easy to appreciate in a time when a few brands are still embedding fingerprint sensors and other eccentric places.

The onboard LTE connection is handled through an Intel modem employing a digital SIM card, or eSIM, which is connected to a worldwide mobile network by Transatel called Ubigi. Each Swift 7 includes a 1GB, one-month free trial of the ceremony. Following that, you will need to sign to get a data program, with almost each region -- but nearly all of Africa, a number of fundamental south Asia, chunks of South America and all of Australia -- within its coverage region.

The support works great outdoors, but it gets pretty bogged down in thickly-walled structures, as is the case with the majority of nyc. Nonetheless, the ease of onboard LTE is not lost on us, however we wish we could sign up with a few of the main US carriers we already have a phone program with for extra convenience.

General assessment

The Acer Swift 7 is the result of Acer's hellbent travel to produce the second"world's thinnest" laptop. It certainly got there and could put that series of words onto the box, but what sort of product did it result in? Honestly, one that's way to easily outpaced and outpriced.

You might have the world's thinnest laptop if you are to pick up an Acer Swift 7, but you have a laptop without a properly functioning trackpad. In addition you have a laptop that is not as strong as others that are more economical, and not that much heavier or thicker, while looking just as superior.

While we respect Acer's excellent product design characteristics brought to bear at the Swift 7we can not confidently suggest that you get this laptop unless you have to absolutely fulfill your urge to have the thinnest laptop.

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